


make me feel alive (shatter me)

by greekdemigod



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universes, F/F, Writober 2019, short story collection, writing challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-11-09 06:28:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 10,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20849012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekdemigod/pseuds/greekdemigod
Summary: 12 short stories of varying length exploring all different sorts of GJ fiction.(was supposed to be a 31 days challenge but i failed. 😂)





	1. parallel universe.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 1: parallel universe.
> 
> a bit of an introspective first part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the month's barely started and i already ran into a spot of tough luck. i had half of this written in the notebook i dedicated to this project, but then i had to walk home in the pouring rain and the notebook got waterlogged and all the ink ran out.  
hopefully the rest of the month goes more smoothly.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

The mirror splinters. Iridescent shards of potential form a constellation all around her, so many threads of life branching off and off and off each other. She sees universes she has visited already reflected in the shiny, sharp-edged pieces of glass. She sees tens, hundreds, thousands she has not.

Anne Lister remains as in awe about the theory of the multiverse as she was that first day. The dazzling grandeur of all of space, time, matter, energy, physics, life existing _all at once _still takes her breath away every time.

She no longer flinches at the shattered glass—realizes now it is only a conjuration of her mind, trying to put universe-hopping into a visual she can comprehend. Theoretically, abstractly, she understands that her soul hops between universes. But rationally, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by it.

So, a mirror. It made sense at the time, and it has stuck since.

The shards tinkle a little as she steps through her own private gallery of all that her life could have been, if only she had made different choices. Big ones, like her profession, the friends she kept, the opportunities she pursued. But the craziest branches happen off things that don’t seem significant at all.

It started out as a job, sought out for her expertise in neuroscience and her open-minded eagerness to advance experiments to reality. Now it has become way more compounded than that. She is... quite singularly obsessed with tracking this many-faceted reality.

And a little obsessed with the woman that seems to cross into her life in every single parallel universe—except this one. _Hers_. She likes to call it her Prime Universe, the one she started out in, because calling it the _real _one feels... inaccurate. Wrong.

They _feel _real.

Rubbing a hand through her shoulder-length hair, Anne thinks that this wouldn’t have gotten so complicated if every parallel universe didn’t feel so damn _real_. Every taste, every smell, every touch. There are sometimes slight vibrations or frequencies of _different_ to things—or she thinks so, at least, but she has been entertaining the theory that it might just be her subjective perception of things.

Still.

For the most part, everything is sort of the same. Strawberries taste as sweet, and the sea smells as salty, and kissing Ann Walker feels as good—though she has no Prime Ann Walker to compare with. But she has Mariana, who, for the sake of science, is only too happy to oblige her needs when she comes out of a trip.

Her fingers trace along the jagged edges. They never cut, never hurt, but they do feel rough and hard beneath her fingertips.

The one where being forced to tutor someone from her class led her on the path to becoming a Literature Professor and meeting Ann Walker as one of her students was very intense and had her in its clutches much longer than she is willing to own up to.

Her eyes flicker to catch freckles shining from a surface—Ann Walker with her van and her dog and her surfboard, the perpetual perfume of salt clinging to her collar bones, the vicious roar of the ocean is one she can still taste on her tongue when she closes her eyes.

A shiver descends her spine as she locks onto a parallel universe where Ann Walker wasn’t into her at all, the one where she is happily married to some guy named Thomas Ainsworth and has three kids with him, and the stark realization that descended on her in that time and space that she had come to rely on finding her love waiting for her in every universe.

What will she get today, she wonders. Her steps don’t make any sound, her breathing rasps hollow as she moves through the exponentially endless universes that are at her fingertips to dive into.

As a rule of thumb, any flashes of Aunt Anne she catches become a top priority, so when she sees her aunt hand something over to Ann, only for the image to blur to a long stretch of road and a gathering of dark clouds, she decides to go for it.

Her fingers sink into the visage, first her digits but then one-two-three knuckles, her palm, her wrist. The tether laces through her ribs, up and over, up and over, winds down across her hips, thighs, knees. The moment she detaches is a dizzying free fall, a swimming in the vast expanse of all the universes, and then the jarring shock when she reattaches in another life.

Her eyes blink open slowly. The room around her smells like stale beer, salt not of the ocean but of fries and chips, and there’s an old jukebox cranking out a _Kansas _song. There’s a blonde behind the bar, long hair tied up into a loose ponytail, faded Guns N Roses shirt tied together to show off an impressive abdomen, and tight jeans shorts clinging to every curve.

Her interest is piqued immediately, because Ann Walker is usually prim and proper—she is just itching to figure out how this one ticks.

“What’s a woman gotta do to get a whiskey neat around here?” she calls out, swaggering up to a stool close to her.

Ann looks at her with mischief twinkling in her baby blues. “Ask, and you shall receive.” She gets to pouring straight away. “Haven’t seen you before. You’re not from around here, are you?”

Anne grins to herself. You could say that.


	2. a smoker.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 2: a smoker.
> 
> all i know is that this is set at a house party. it's super vague lmao aye
> 
> [tw drug use (chill tho, it's just some weed)]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two for two, so far so good! hope you enjoy this one as much as the previous one, which got insanely good reception and made me so happy! <3

_A smoker_ (oil on canvas).

It’s the first thing that comes to Ann’s mind when she spots the host of the party straddling her window-sill, one leg inside and firmly anchored to the arm chair right next to her, the other dangling over the abyss of a four floors descent to street level. With the way the sun is angled, throwing its light at her from the outside, most of her face is cloaked in shadow.

Her profile is an art work in negative space.

Sharp line of her jaw, the plush curves of her mouth, a strong nose and a messy head of hair. The tip of a tongue poking out to wet her lips. A cigarette held between long, sure fingers that bring it up to her. Smoke flows out with every exhale, forms around the words she speaks without even deigning her audience to look at them.

Anne Lister is holding court. There is no other way to describe the incredible sway she holds over the half-drunk people sitting around her living room, leaning against her walls, crowding up her kitchen, listening.

“Aren’t we lucky? To _be_ alive. To _have_ life.” Her hand sweeps through the air in front of her, and the lit end of her cigarette casts a pinprick of orange-red light over her chin, the corner of her mouth. Ann stands equally transfixed. “Isn’t every tiny moment an inexplicable delight packed with potential?”

She came here with Catherine, both intent to forget about their lives for an evening at a party they were only adjacently invited to—Washington is, and since Catherine is his roommate, it seemed okay to take over said invitation when he came down with a nasty cold.

Ann did not expect it would be like this.

She is too aware of her breathing, of the pounding roar of blood in her ears.

It all deafens to silence when Anne swings inwards, hazy eyes sliding away from the bustling city sprawled outside her window and seem to single her out in the crowd. Rooted to the floor, she suffers the intense brown-eyed gaze for a few charged seconds.

_Will I show fear by looking away? _She wonders. She wants to tell herself this is not the animal kingdom, yet even knowing that rationally, their eyes remain locked and her insides liquefy more.

Anne takes a slow drag of her cigarette and then crooks a finger at her, making a gesture for her to come closer only once. Ann still feels the gravitas behind it.

The people between the two of them part for her. With Anne’s attention settled, conversations spring up again, furthering on Anne’s soliloquy or branching to politics, university life, the underground scene. Ann would love to be able to eavesdrop on some of these conversations, but instead she’s walking closer to this woman she has never met before in her life yet can’t deny.

“Who are you?” Her voice is deep, gravely. This close-up, the smell of weed is strong, and it explains why her eyes don’t seem entirely in focus. Her touch is sure when it lands warm and deft on her arm, grazing gently as she tugs Ann closer. “I haven’t seen you before.”

“Ann,” she whispers. Her voice sounds as shaky as she feels.

A slow smile like a sunrise slips onto the brunette’s face. “So you know who I am. Interesting.”

“Oh, I—no, I don’t, actually.” Ann wants to shrug. Wants to fidget. But Anne’s touch is heavy and keeps her still. “Not really, but I’ve—like, heard of you, I guess.”

“Right.” Anne tilts her face, lets her eyes crawl slowly across Ann’s face. “So, your name?”

“Ann.”

“Mhm?”

“No, I—_oh. Right._ Our names are Ann(e).”

“That so?” Anne seems endlessly amused with that, light bursting into her eyes and dripping down into her face. Like an angel crying, a theme that has been repeated throughout the history of art, except it’s emotions that bleed into the rest of her face stemming from her eyes, an openness unfolding right in front of her.

(Her breath is taken away by the grand quality of Anne’s expressions, so beautifully perfect to be captured on paper.)

But no, she is here because Catherine needed her to get out sometime, to mingle with more people than just her one friend and all her many relatives she hides behind.

(Well, she would not be this inspired to draw, for the first time in months, if she had not come out here.)

“Do you partake?” Something slips inside Anne’s mouth and suddenly there’s more of a British drawl to her words, like a sleepy lilt weaving through. It takes Ann a moment to look away from the open gaze directed up at her and to the stub of her joint she is holding between them.

Ann has never.

When it comes down to it, she is apprehensive, not quite bold or stubborn enough to step a toe out of line. Drugs? No, she could never be brave enough.

Yet...

The words do not come. It’s not pressure, or expectations—Anne’s eyes are set kind enough, patient enough.

For one night, she does not want to be mousy Ann. Never has adventures Ann. Lives vicariously through Catherine’s half-assed rebellious streak.

“Sometimes,” she finds herself lying, painting herself into this new Ann right in front of Anne.

Anne’s hand slides lower, finding purchase on her hip to pull her closer. Her breath is warm against the spot beneath her ear when she whispers, “I like girls that look innocent but aren’t.”

(Nothing about the way her body reacts to that—viscerally jolts against the restraints of her skin, her nerves shivering—is innocent, there’s that.)

Anne hovers close to her, head angling back to face her, mere inches from her. The burning end is dangerously close to her skin, papery, unfilled parchment waiting to catch fire. But nothing happens except she feels Anne’s chest expand with her intake, their bodies now pushing together, an exquisite stillness between them as Anne holds her breath.

Then she blows it out against Ann’s lips, leans forward to kiss her with it.

Her hands shake as they hang limply by her side. The daring girl she wanted to lie into existence is nowhere to be found when she needs her most, caught against a woman as darkly magnetic as Anne Lister.

She sputters a small cough, and a flush rises to her cheeks.

Anne’s hand detaches from her, brings a thumb up to her mouth to trace across her bottom lip. “Too much?”

“Just—didn’t expect that.” Her heart beats with her wicked lies, but she has never felt so singularly alive. “Give me that.”

“Aye, aye, captain.” Anne leans back slightly and hands her the joint, looking at her—expectantly? Curiously? As open as she seems to Ann, she is still really hard to read.

(Doesn’t help that in this one minute she has stepped twenty miles out of her comfort zone.)

She manages not to cough again as she takes a firm drag. The smoke sits uncomfortable in her throat for a moment, slinks down into her chest, itches on the way out. Anne nods at her, gestures her to do it again, so she does.

She leaves it in her grip as she inches back to Anne and claims her mouth again.

Ann feels like a whole new person. Smoking, drinking, sitting on Anne’s lap. Hands under her dress. Time slowing down to non-existence. There is music, and dancing, and at one point, Catherine asking her if she’s alright.

“I’ll take care of her,” Anne murmurs, grinning at Catherine over Ann’s shoulder before burying her head there.

Her bones peel back to let her go free. Ann steps out of her anxiety, her depressive episode, her chronic pains. Weightless, in anti-gravity, orbiting around Anne Lister, she feels free. Connected to the whole universe.

“You are lighting up like the night sky right now,” Anne drawls against her skin, not itching with her nervousness for once. Who knew she could ever feel so liberated?

“You talk like you eat poetry for breakfast,” Ann counters, running her fingers through Anne’s hair, silken brown strands that slide over her knuckles. When Anne kisses her collar bone tenderly, she mentally amends, You _do everything _like you eat poetry for breakfast.

Anne takes her by the hand and leads her away when it’s later, much later, dark outside later, Catherine is gone later, no one is paying them any attention anymore later. The door of her bedroom gets locked. The blinds get thrown wide open to let in the moon light.

Everything Anne Lister does is calculated, deliberate.

Everything Ann Walker does that night is, for once, without thinking. She has never soared so high.


	3. early morning.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 3: early morning.
> 
> ann likes to surf, and anne likes to watch girls that surf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dedicated to joan/factandfictions, the sort of reader that means a writer will never want to stop. thank you for everything, always. <3

As soon as she lets him free, her seventy pounds’ worth of muscle and golden fur goes bounding across the beach. His paws leave deep grooves in the wet, hard-packed sand. Ann pads after him, whistling a tune beneath her breath.

It’s early. The sand beneath her bare feet is cold with dew, and the wind that streams into her face carries a similar chill. Goose bumps rise against her wetsuit at the prospect of that first hit of salt water that will crash over her.

And yet, walking into this sunrise with her dog galloping up ahead and her surf board hoisted onto her shoulder, she can’t bring herself to regret coming out here any morning she can to catch a few waves before she has to face her day.

Between the early hour and the way this stretch of beach sits nestled between rocky dunes, she doesn’t usually run into people here. Occasionally a lone jogger comes by, and they’ll be accompanied by Buddy for a few minutes before he comes running back to watch her, but not ever anyone like _her_.

Ann notices her from afar, a blob of dark color against the golden sand and the white foam of the waves being pushed higher and higher up onto the shore. Dark hair, dark clothes, arms wrapped around her tucked-up legs to make herself small.

She can’t stop Buddy from leaping at her—followed by a shout, and then wary laughter as the woman starts scratching him behind his ears. “Who are you, then?” she asks. Ann smiles.

When she’s close enough, she calls out, “Buddy, _sit_!” It both carries her command to him, which he obeys, and brings the woman’s attention to her. “Sorry about him. He’s very excitable.”

“Ah, no problem. He’s very sweet.”

Yes, he is. Her golden sunshine boy is the very sweetest dog there is.

She kneels by him to rub him across his chest and back, but her eyes remain trained on the mystery woman she has never seen before—and their sleepy little beach town is too small not to know every single inhabitant, from Eliza Priestley at Lookout Point all the way to Charles and Mariana’s inn in West Bay Street. “I’m Ann Walker. I haven’t seen you around here before.”

“You wouldn’t have, no. I’m visiting my sister. I’m Anne Lister.”

“Gotcha.” Ann smiles as she shakes the other Anne’s hand. “I’m going to head out soon. Don’t worry, he’s perfectly well-behaved and never runs away. He’ll keep you company if you want him to, though.”

After a minute of seagulls-filled silence, Ann nods and gets up. The waves welcome her home to her rightful place on the sea, cupping her in the curve of every wave, cradling her whenever she tumbles off. Soon water sits trapped between her skin and the wetsuit, warming her slowly against the chilly spray.

The exhilarating rush rumbles through her, waking her up better than anything else ever could. It clears her mind of the nightmares that usually plague her, the mundane worries and concerns of adult life.

Every time she looks over at the beach, Anne Lister is petting her dog in one way or another. She can see his tail wagging from afar. Once, she’s not sure exactly what, but a loud sound rises that could be a bark of his, or a bark of laughter of hers.

Fondness wells equally.

The powerful swell of the ocean carries her up and forward, the power of mother nature trembling beneath her board. She never feels as connected with the natural forces of the universe as when she’s surfing, when water and air combine to make her feel like a goddess in her own right.

She rides out this final wave—she never can quite predict which one it will be, how long she’ll be out here, but her gut tells her when it’s been enough to get her fill and it tells her so now. It carries her neatly onto the sand and she hops off so she can drop to her knees in time for Buddy to leap into her arms.

He is all sandy fur and eager licks to her cheek.

“You are very impressive out there,” Anne says, gentle words carried on the air to her.

Her smile beams to match the sun. “Thank you. Would you like to try sometime?”

“Oh, no. No, that seems like a bad idea.”

“The offer stands, should you change your mind.” Buddy runs along with her as she walks back to her van, water sloshing inside her wetsuit, hope setting her small town steady life alight—new people in town always end up being so much fun.

Anne Lister already seems like she’ll be most fun of all.


	4. dark night.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 4: dark night.
> 
> hunter + prey. beware, here be vampires.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry guys for a super short one, but so much is going on right now and writing was DIFFICULT. maybe i can elaborate on this in another day’s prompt, we’ll see!
> 
> for what it's worth, i hope you enjoy!

Halifax might be a sunny, picturesque town by day—but when the last of the day’s sun has bled from the sky, it turns dour and humorless, the sort of place where children are kept inside with the door locked at all costs.

It did not use to be so. Anne remembers it fondly.

Carnivals, fairs, late night picnics. Parties to rival what Dionysus’ revelries must have been like in his days, enough to turn anyone delirious with fun.

But not anymore.

She stands by the window, gazing over the sheltered little houses that sit at the foot of the slight hill upon which Shibden Hall was built. The shadows in this valley stretch long and low, dark enough that the ravens and crows have no trouble hiding at all.

A few spots of light remain—windows back lit from inside, street lamps posted solemnly throughout desolate streets. Not enough to keep the creatures of night at bay, surely, but it’s not light’s job to do so. Even from afar, she can see cloves of garlic strung up above the doors, the basins in which holy water waits to be used.

_Silly superstition_, she thinks to herself, dragging a nail loosely against the paint peeling off the window frames of what used to be her uncle’s lovely mansion. _Don’t they know garlic holding off vampires is a myth? Only sharp wood, plunged between the ribs, creaking, cracking._

The memories stay with her, always. The sounds most of all, so vivid and close to her ear that she shivers whenever she hears the wood splintering against sturdy bone, the overwhelming gush of blood departing a formerly immortal body.

One last look at the moon trying its best, Artemis fighting, but the rays are dimly filtered through at best.

She stalks away, back to the interior of the house. Deeper within, to its bowels, and the secrets hidden there. The double door only opens when she puts her hand to its smooth mahogany, magic warming her palm as it scans her for her identity and confirms her allowed entry.

There are rows upon rows of tools, weapons, shelved against the circular walls of the lair. The metal ones gleam in the light. The wooden ones have been carved from such dark wood that they blend into the shadowy corners.

(There used to be a car, but she totaled that one a while back. Sometimes, when her grim reality does not cling to her as suffocatingly, she is a little more Bruce Wayne than Batman. Only when she isn’t looking.)

Halifax might be dark at night, but Anne Lister is darker still in her get-up, strapped from head to toe in thick black fabric, patches of leather beneath to protect her a little better. (She has gnarly scars from her young, brash days of thinking nothing could be faster, stronger, deadlier than her. She prefers to keep the rest of her unmarred, because girls liking scars only goes so far in a place like this.)

The stake feels heftier than usual in her hand today. Her every step, loud despite how lightly she treads, resounding, thundering footfalls. Her heart is beating furiously, rapidly. It will be tonight. She has skirted around the nest for long enough, picked off every straggler she’s likely to get.

Their numbers thinned, their defenses up, only she could slip in tonight and end it all. She has been stalking them. Even now, she prowls closer, mouth slavering at the idea of her revenge, her holy vengeance.

Finally she is closing in on Halifax’s vampire queen and her royal court, stalking the prey she has been chipping away at for weeks.

Tonight, she will finally wade into the horde of vampires, slaying every last one until she can save her Ann Walker from them. Tonight, they will finally know death, and it will be the darkest night indeed.


	5. book plot.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 5: book plot.
> 
> rejoice! for today, we have ourselves a royal wedding!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so! the original prompt for today was "forbidden journey", but i couldn't for the life of me come up with something (except forbidden journeys to the flamethrower store), so i decided i could break the rules and instate a new prompt instead.  
since i got a book gifted to me today, i decided it would be relevant if i gleaned the plot from the back cover and used that as the prompt. as such, we got: arranged marriage, but the wife-to-be is actually into her betrothed's sister.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

There are the noises that are to be expected—carriages rolling up, horses neighing, servants rushing around. Behind it, almost drowned out but not entirely, bird song and the gentle Spring wind. It is the sort of beautiful day that their little hub of the world is known for.

In other words, it is the sort of beautiful day perfect for a wedding.

Anne Lister has spent much of the morning tending to the duties of the king’s sister: receiving guests, ordering servants around, showing the most-honored invitees around personally. (A good half hour of valuable time was lost to Eliza Priestley and her unceasing interest in the castle’s expansive gardens.)

Now, however, she is taking the stairs three steps at a time, skirts swishing around her sensible leather boots as she hurries. Enough time has been lost as is. She hardly qualifies a proper princess—even her brother the king has mentioned as such.

It should surprise no one that more than being a princess, she is the royal spymaster, utilizing her position at court and her wealth of resources to pick up on gossip, foil plans, do scheming of her own. Halifax has never had an official spymaster, but between her cunning and her need to prove herself, her brother has found one in her.

Undoubtedly there is much to glean even right now, when she is climbing up higher into the castle in pursuit of one last task before she can mingle into the crowd and get back to doing what she likes best. She balls her skirts into her hands to stop it from obstructing her pace—her frustration is as steadily building as her pace.

Still, she promised.

She knocks perfunctorily, but whisks inside without waiting for an answer.

Ann Walker is only in her undergarments, flimsy and lacey things that cling to her slender frame. She really is quite the wisp of a girl. Quiet, subservient, but pretty. She smiles easily and flusters even easier. Anne has been a companion her since she arrived here for the arranged marriage two weeks ago and found her very agreeable.

On what is supposed to be the happiest day of her life, she does not look very joyful though.

“Out,” she commands, snapping at the ladies tending to miss Walker’s hair and garments. “I will help her.”

That is not how any of this is supposed to go, but they can’t very well stand up to her orders, so they bow and trudge away. She can hear Cordingley and Pierre’s mutterings as soon as they think they’re out of earshot—she has great appreciation for her own keen hearing sometimes.

Chuckling to herself, she locks the door lest they be disturbed, then sidles up behind Ann Walker.

“Dear, you look...” Dreary. Beautiful and tragic like a sad painting.

Silence falls as she pads further into the room. Despite the warming temperatures outside, the fireplace in miss Walker’s room is always tended to. Even now logs are burning away eagerly, chips smoking and embers glowing in the mess of ash and dust.

Its stone mantle gives way to maroon wallpaper with golden detailing, the windows of her room in the tower looking out over the lavish gardens. Most of the view is taken up by the lake, that great stretch of brilliant water and incredible plants growing around and from the bottom of it.

If you look closely, you might see a flock of mermaids, but Anne has no time to gaze idly out of the window currently.

Ann looks at her imploringly over her shoulder, so she steps closer still until she’s at arm’s length.

“I don’t think sisters-in-law are supposed to help each other dress.”

“Surely not, no,” Anne complies, deft fingers undoing the lacing on Ann’s undergarments and doing them up better, more securely. “But I am not very conventional.”

“No,” Ann chuckles, a pretty blush touching to the apples of her cheeks. “You are not so.”

The court’s favored tailor has truly outdone herself on Ann’s wedding garments. Most of the dress and skirts are periwinkle brocade, the embossing in lace and silver stitching. The underskirts feel silken in her hands.

She is quiet in her concentration to dress up Ann right—she does not bother with nearly as many layers as this, and when the castle is not overrun with their vassals and sworn bannermen she can more often be found in typically male dress.

It is because she is so absorbed in her task that she does not notice how intensely Ann is watching her until she flicks her gaze upwards for a moment and finds fiery blue reflected at her through the mirror.

“Is something the matter?”

Ann’s intake of breath strains against the tight bodice of her dress, cut low and sensuous, yet still somewhat obscuring. “There is something I should tell you before I marry your brother.”

_Here it comes then_, she thinks. Anne would not have been so good a spymaster if she had not already long found out all of Ann Walker’s secrets, but she is pleased to find her eager to be honest—she can work much easier with genuine people than expert liars such as herself.

“You know you can tell me anything, little bird,” she whispers, putting her sure hands on Ann’s shoulders to turn her to face her without the means of a mirror. “We are to be family, are we not?”

_Tell me about your magicks_, she implores her, and tries to bring her openness for the subject to her eyes. While it might be forbidden in much of the known world, Anne is actually _fascinated _by it and has been hoping for a moment to be able to convey as much to Ann.

Now is the perfect time.

But Ann Walker surprises her. Wearing most of her wedding dress, on the day she is to marry her older brother the king, she moves against her, leans up onto the tips of her toes, and kisses her.

She is softer than any woman Anne has ever kissed, and more shy too. It is merely a fluttering of a press of their mouths at first, a tentative reaching. But she can’t deny how much it stirs her—this one woman she was not allowed to have, therefore she found her thoughts consumed with her.

Anne gathers her up in her arms and pulls her to her body even more strongly, deepens their kiss to a more solid contact and a more breathtaking affair.

Oh, to be able to maneuver her to the bed, to be able to kiss her in every comfort and no rush.

“That—” Anne mutters against Ann’s mouth, catching her breath, “was not what I expected you to tell me.”

“Ah.” Ann hums thoughtfully, troubled eyes gazing up at her. “What did you think?”

She puts Ann’s cheeks into her grasp, cradling her pale, freckled face. “We don’t have time to talk about all the things I wanted to hear from you. Your groom awaits. Your kingdom awaits.”

Outside the door, the world does not stop for them. There is a wedding underway. There is too much at stake for Anne to run away with this girl to a quiet, isolated place where she can further explore what this delicious thing might be.

She composes herself, and then she hides all of Ann’s pretty fluster beneath a lacey headdress that spills in heavy layers from her golden curls. The train drapes to the floor, dragging behind her every rustling step.

Anne offers her arm to start guiding Ann out of her room and down the several flights of stairs down to the hall below. They walk in silence for a while before Ann pipes up, from beneath enough layers of lace that she sounds faint: “It does not have to be a marriage of love, right?”

That was something they had talked about at length back when her brother’s courting of this well-connected, wealthy noble woman transpired entirely by letter correspondence—Anne had poured some of her most captivating, romantic sentences into those.

“Correct. My brother is a good man, but he knows that matters of the heart can't be forced.”

“Then I will go through with it.” She shuffles closer, their arms hooking together to allow for it. “It’s a good thing for both our families. But I will not go up there and swear my heart belongs to him when it belongs to the person who penned me such beautiful promises and built me elaborate dreams on paper.”

“Ann...”

“I know how to play the game, Anne.”

She’ll be damned, but Anne has never been quite so excited to see which way the wind will blow on this one. Ann might prove to be the most interesting woman yet at court.

And for the entirety of the ceremony, her lips tingle with remembering.


	6. nightmare.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 6: nightmare.
> 
> a little inception-inspired nightmare-hopping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an early one today as i'm about to head out for most of the day.  
hope you enjoy!
> 
> week 1: done!

There is a booming business in the utilization of the dreamscape technology to stave off nightmares. It requires a gentle touch and at least a background of something psychology-based, so Anne Lister is a perfect fit. Former psychiatrist turned corporate espionage expert, it has taken a lot out of her, but this—_this _makes her feel better.

Makes her feel like she’s giving back.

(She has constant nightmares about the lives she has ruined.)

It does not surprise her that Ann Walker is a repeat customer though. Most nightmares, she goes in once, gets to the root of the problem, and combats it. Turns the lucid dreaming into something nice and pleasant, so that the person wakes up well-rested and, most of all, not remembering anything of the nightmare.

Ann Walker is different. Her nightmares are compounded, delicate things. They are intense, and they keep changing before Anne can solve them like the Rubik’s cubes they are, and they have her stumped. And Ann Walker _never _wakes up in blissful oblivion. She always remembers.

It’s a tough nut to crack, but Anne likes the challenge, and even more than that, she enjoys getting to be in Ann Walker’s dream night after night—it keeps her away from her own accusatory ones.

Ann Walker looks small, sitting on the edge of her bed. Her night shirt swaddles up her slight frame, falling far beyond her knees, but her eyes stare vacantly away. The purple under her eyes is starting to blossom more darkly.

This will be the sixth night in a row Anne will be staying over to try and guide her to a better dream place.

“Why don’t you lie next to me tonight?”

Anne perks up from the machinery she was slowly untangling, moves her gaze back to the girl. “I could.”

“That cot can’t be very comfortable.”

It’s not. But it is sturdy and it does the job, and if she wants a comfortable bed, she has one at home. But she can’t deny the offer, so after she has attached both of them to it, she carefully slides under the sheets with Ann.

The sheets warm to their bodies—Anne’s more so than Ann’s, since she seems perpetually cold—and tuck them into their own little bubble.

“I’m scared.” Ann’s voice is the frail flutter of bird’s wings against a cage.

Anne turns onto her side and gently drapes her fingers over her cheek, thumb brushing over the splash of freckles over her cheekbone. “I know.”

“Couldn’t we go into one of your dreams? Just once?”

Anne chortles humorlessly. “I doubt that would be any better.”

“Oh.” A long while of silence, in which Anne hopes the other has fallen asleep, but no, she has not. There is still the slightest bits of movement, and a flash of blue when she tilts her head just so. “Maybe we don’t sleep at all tonight.”

“You’re very tired, Ann. I doubt you could stay up much longer.”

She is suddenly much closer, their knees bumping together and Ann’s breath hot against her face. “I am more than you think I am.”

She is, at that. Her nightmares have proven her a captivating woman—there are so many references in her dreams, to books, to plays, to art. The fact it keeps changing, shifting, adapting means even while dreaming, her unconscious and subconscious are hard at work still. Anne has only ever known one mind like Ann’s—her own.

The sound of the wiring being torn off filters into the room, followed by a soft noise of impact as it is chucked onto the carpeted floor.

“Not tonight,” she whispers, before she slides her body fully against Anne’s and settles a hand on her waist. “_Please_.”

This is not what the Walker family is paying her handsome amounts of money for—she’s really raking it in big on this one assignment—but who is she to deny the gentle pleading of Ann’s body, the desperate need not to dream again in her voice?

(Maybe she’ll go to sleep with her guards down after this, she justifies to herself.)

She dips her head to kiss Ann’s neck, a slow and burning drag of her mouth against paper-thin skin wrapping up every anxiety, every concern, every bad thought.

This might mean she is well on her way to ruin another life, Ann already so busted-up in her hands, but tonight is about forgetting such nightmares.

They do not sleep at all.


	7. soulmate.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 7: soulmate.
> 
> ann walker has been searching for her soulmate all her life, but she did not expect it would be like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't actually love soulmate aus that much (where your ship is actual soulmates, really, them as non-soulmates? YAS) but here we are!  
iris, you better be happy now!

Ann has a whole notebook dedicated to finding her soulmate. She is a true romantic at heart, so this quest to find her one true love consumes her—it seems silly to her to try and connect to other people, romantically, when her perfect match is out there somewhere.

Blame her parents. Their story of finding each other in the middle of a park in Spring’s full bloom, tugged together by what people call the red string of fate, or connected heartstrings, or whatever you want to call it (_magic_, Ann thinks, _it’s magic_)—she was raised on that story, made to believe she _had_ to have an epic tale of her own with a true love of her own.

The notebook was introduced in high school, when her brain was no longer sufficient to hold all the little details she had scrounged together.

She is flipping through it now, fingers gliding over hurriedly-drawn sketches as she tried not to forget flashes of her soulmate she saw in dreams. Many a morning was spent cursing herself for not remembering her dream, though it sat so vividly in her mind just seconds prior.

There is a foldout map of the city in the center, with X’s marked where she is fairly certain she has been tugged toward.

It’s not an exact science. Would that it were, things would be so much easier. There wouldn’t be so many services that promise, for a pricey monthly fee, to find your soulmate for you. Companies wouldn’t have their cheapest insurance policies _only _for those that have found their soulmate, a slight 5% of the population.

She hates that their society is using the intrinsic romantic principles of the universe to make it work for capitalism, but there’s nothing she can do about that.

Except find her soulmate.

She imagines her life will become so much easier once she does. As if miraculously, all of her problems are going to disappear. She will look at this person and she will no longer be an anxious mess, will have no more unexplainable aches, will finally feel _good_.

Life has not been very kind to Ann Walker, but she clutches onto her notebook like a lifeline and perseveres.

There are many lesbian bars and pubs marked on the map. For a while, the incessant tugging in her gut led her to the front step of an apartment belong to Steph and Mariana Belcombe—but neither are her soulmate.

Steph was easy to check out. One therapy session was enough to know he wasn’t it—the tugging tried to get her out of that couch, back onto her feet.

Mariana was harder to get a hold of, but worth the effort to figure out she wasn’t it either. Plenty pretty, and sharply witty and flirtatious so that for one second, Ann _hoped _the tugging would lead her straight into the woman’s arms.

No dice.

But she has not given up. The flashes in her dreams are becoming more and more frequent. Of tumbling brown locks, of tired brown eyes. Her soulmate is a woman, she has long deduced, but _what a woman_, she thinks, waking up from most of her dreams aching in a decidedly different way.

She would make a fine researcher—if she was at all interested in any mysteries besides this one.

It’s a chilly, grey October day, nothing like the beautiful day on which her parents met. She has pinpointed this place, triangulated it as being close to where her soulmate _must _live, or at least pass through a lot. Her anxiety rolls throug her sickeningly, but she feels right about this.

When she looks up from her notebook and finds a woman marching up to her with power and grace in every line of her long, leather-clad legs… Well, modern day requires for a more modern version, no?

Instantly, she feels so _right_. Those eyes—she knows them. The woman’s hair has been freshly cut, at least in the past two months since the last time she dreamt of a spill of brown hair across a silken pillow.

“Good afternoon.” Her voice is lower than she expected, but smooth, polished. “Do you have any idea how hard you are to find?”

“Oh.” Ann blushes before she can help herself, a giggle getting choked in her nervously-bobbing throat. “I—Sorry?”

The other woman’s laugh is a pleasant balm. “No, don’t be.”

They sit next to each other, sneaking glances like infatuated school girls. Her notebook sits in her lap, swollen with notes and sketch paper, only a few pages left unwritten.

For once, the force inside her sits perfectly still, as if she is exactly where she is supposed to be.

But her anxiety, her aches, all of it—it’s still there.

Well.

They have the rest of their lives to figure it out, don’t they?

“What’s your name?” the woman asks, setting her hand deliberately on the bench between them.

Ann mimics the movement, but is not quite brave enough to lace their hands together. A few inches of wood sit between them. “Ann. Ann Walker.”

“Is that so? How coincidental. I’m Anne Lister.” The other has no such lack of courage; their pinky fingers curl together and in their bodies, it’s like fireworks going off. The soul bond mark slides over their knuckles, across their palm, searching for its rightful place.

For Ann, it settles on her left wrist, covering up a gnarly welt of raised scar tissue that has been sitting there, shaming her, for months.

For Anne, it sits over her collar bone, the top of it inching above the neckline of her shirt, almost impossible to hide.

“So… How do you feel about going on a date?”

“I’ve been waiting to hear you say that. I would love to.”


	8. where am i?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 8: where am i?
> 
> continuation of prompt 1!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another shorty, because i had a work reception last night and i have been exhausted all day.

**prompt 8: where am I?**

Everything around her trembles as the uneasy feeling settles. The headache crashes into her suddenly, no pre-warning, just a sledgehammer to her forehead. Her vision blurs as she looks around, but enough filters through that she can see the road in front of her dissipate.

The space Anne falls into feels like the mirror hall her mind conjures up to make the universe-hopping understandable, but it’s all wrong.

A creeping cold slithers over her skin. When she tries to speak, to test if sound works, only a croak escapes, followed by a white cloud of her breath.

She blinks a few more times and it’s like having to shake off water, a slow drip of her full vision returning to her.

It’s still all wrong.

There are chunks of life, like cut-out blocks, floating into a great swathe of nothing. Only when she looks down does a floor appear beneath her feet, stitched together of polished tiles. It expands only when she takes step, the tiles only reaching two beyond her current one.

She recognizes the wooden paneling of her home, but the watercolor paintings are not from her own universe. Further ahead, a long stretch of beach, and angled weirdly above it what had been Ann Walker’s dorm in all its glory.

Her footsteps should be making sounds, but all she hears is a buzzing seemingly coming from _inside _her.

This can’t be good.

“Where am I?”

She thinks it, yet it reverberates around her, echoing and echoing and echoing, the sound bouncing against itself and nothing else.

When she stops, stands as still as her panicked breathing allows, her surroundings start to turn and spin all around her. When she continues walking, everything halts on its axis.

Pain sharp like a spike of ice drives itself into her skull. Stars shoot in front of her eyes, taking away every little bit of the strange place she finds herself in. When she comes to, shivering with cold sweat, there is warm blood gushing from her nose.

She sputters against the rusty taste, but when she wipes, none of the red clings to her hand—it slides off, leaving her skin spotless.

Something is very, very wrong.

Thoughts become sluggish inside her mind, sinking to a place beneath even as she thinks them, trains of thought running itself into the ground.

Her arm shoots out to try and catch herself as a spell of dizziness overtakes her, but she falls regardless, spinning down into a free fall. Everything rushes along with her, all these cubes of life plucked out of their universe and scattered throughout this purgatory.

She impacts against nothing and the world shifts along with her, everything turned upside down.

Anne blows out a deep sigh. A wind picks up around her, toying with her hair, gliding beneath the layers of her suit. A rumble overhead announces a storm must be coming.

Every time she blinks now, the colors shift. Greens and blues start to bleed. Fade. The reds swell and swell until everything is a shade of scarlet, carmine, rust.

_Where am I?_ she wonders before she loses unconsciousness.


	9. sharp items.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 9: sharp items. 
> 
> nothing sharper than the swords that captain anne lister's pirate crew wields, though they are good people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you know me at all, you know i fucking love pirates. this story was LOOOONG overdue.

“Looking sharp, Captain.”

Anne whirls away from her perch against the bow of the ship, where she had been gazing out across the unruly, beautiful ocean all around them. Washington stands at attention a few feet away from her, a smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth that would be insolent if they hadn’t known each other for two decades already.

“I’ll show you something sharp, Washington,” she retorts, hand settling on the grip of the bejeweled scimitar strapped to her hip. “And prove how soft you have gotten.”

Her Quartermaster bows his head in surrender and gestures behind him. Her crew is hard at work, utilizing the relative peace of the day to tend to patchwork of the sails, swabbing the deck, checking over the lines for fraying. A small contingency are practicing their swordsmanship, the sound of steel on steel absorbed into the singing all of them have fallen into to make the work pass merrily.

But that must not be what Samuel means.

Standing in the door frame of her cabin stands their… Anne has not yet decided what she is to be. She is not a prisoner—she would not be given the captain’s private cabin for sleeping quarters if she were a prisoner. But she is not a crew member either, or an honored guest.

Complicated is what she is.

Beautiful, with her untamed golden hair and the resistance in her clear blue eyes, but also bruised in a way that goes beyond physical, though the blue has still not faded from her fair complexion across the wrists where she was strung up like an animal, and from her throat where a ruthless captain grabbed her one too many few times.

She doesn’t want to think about what could have happened to a girl like her if Anne hadn’t boarded the ship, taken everything they had, and then put every last one of those horrid men to her sword until the deck ran red with their blood.

The soles of her leather boots make no sound against the wooden planks beneath her as she smoothly, fluidly weaves her way across the deck, swings around the mizzenmast and takes the steps to her cabin set at the rear end of the ship.

Ann Walker is clutching her chemise to her body, watching her intensely. The heat behind her gaze does not take Anne aback in the slightest—that hate is to be expected. Maybe one day she will not hate and mistrust all pirates equally, especially the male ones, but that day will not be soon.

She does not look at Anne with the same hate, though. Anne has been careful with her, patient, and she is rewarded with a tentative trust—and this morning, a tentative smile as well.

“Good morning. Walk with me?”

Ann is still of few words though, so she nods and falls into step with her, hobbling around in leather boots that are too big on her, clomping as they take the rest of the staircase up to the very front of the ship.

Cordingley smiles from the steering wheel as they pass, but she is the only other person directly around them—and when they get to the furthest back railing of the ship, it’s far enough away for some relative privacy.

The sun reflects off the ripples in the water, illuminates the white foam cresting waves. Cries of seagulls accompany the gentle sound of a sea breeze.

Anne Lister feels most at home with her trusted ship beneath her, the vast ocean all around her, and her crew at her beck and call. But she has started to realize it is not that way for Ann Walker—she must have been a lady once, likely married and with children, somewhere landed.

When she closes her eyes, the greenery of her birth place springs up in her vision, but she can’t go back to the piney smell of the forest when her favored scent of salt envelops her so.

“We are setting sail to a city soon,” she broaches the subject, in the most gentle way she knows how to. Unlike the lady her family wanted her to become, the lady her sister has become, she possesses none of the qualities to be one: softness, gentility, subtlety. At least she is not as brusque as she once was. “If you would like to get off and find your way home, we can give you some money and hire you a few mercenaries.”

Ann reaches for her arm, hands clamping down on hard over the well-fashioned sleeve of her coat. “No.”

“You would be most safe, I—”

Ann interrupts, eyes going wide. “_ No _.”

The fingers that dig into her arm are clamped strong enough to bruise as well, but Captain Anne Lister is made of sturdier stuff. “Okay, what do you want to do, then?”

The girl is quiet for some time, her gaze casting out towards the horizon—casting out _ beyond _. “You are the only one who has ever cared about my well-being. If you would have me, I would like to stay.”

Normally, she would all for having a pretty girl on board, in her cabin even, but it’s not like that. Ann Walker is not particularly the type to fare well among a pirate crew.

But she could learn, could she not?

“I will have you, if you make yourself useful.”

Determination settles into her, back and shoulders straightened up, chin slightly upturned. “I will.”

“Good. Let’s start with getting you some water and soap, clean clothes, and get you among my people.” She slides her hand up Ann’s arm and squeezes beneath her elbow. “They’re good people. I trust them with my life.” Anne pulls at her until their arms are interlaced. “Among us, you will always be protected.”

They come to a halt just within the door of Anne’s cabin, standing on a fine if somewhat simple rug rolled out over the wooden planks, the silken sheets on her bed messy from Ann’s troubled sleep, her desk for once completely empty from the usual maps, seafaring tools, and bottles of rum that reside there.

Ann moves closer to Anne, standing at a hair’s breadth away, her fingers trailing over the pommel of Anne’s scimitar while looking up at her. “Good. I want to be fearless, like you.”

“You will be.” And Anne kisses her, the solemn vow captured between their lips, hope breathed back into Ann Walker that she might outgrow her trauma one day and forge a new life out on the sea.


	10. in the woods.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 10: in the woods. 
> 
> ann would only go into the woods in the dead of night for one person in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another short one because i am absolutely knackered. hope you like it nonetheless! <3

Branches crunch underneath their boots as they, quietly otherwise, pick their way through the forest. With the sun down and Fall firmly set, the night is chilly. Ann shivers despite her thick coat and the scarf wrapped twice around her slender neck.

Anne is wielding the military grade torchlight like a shield, throwing the beam of light this way and that, cleaving through the darkness of the night.

They’re supposed to be in Ann’s bed, doing what teenage girls do at sleepovers: gossip, giggle, not get any sleep. Or doing what lesbians do, which also entails not getting any sleep. But they’re friends, since two queer women can be friends just fine, and they’re not getting any sleep because Anne wants to trek into the woods at midnight to catch sight of the full moon.

She knows she shouldn’t, but all Ann can think of is her creeping suspicion that werewolves really exist—and if they do, they’ll sure as anything find the two of them a nice midnight snack.

Her hands are buried deep in her pockets, shoulders hunched up level with her ears. Anne doesn’t seem cold in just her sweater, determination burning her to a glowing heat from the inside.

They don’t talk, but occasionally they bump into each other and she catches a quarter of Anne’s shadowy smile.

This is not the first time her best friend drags her into something that is ill-advised or dangerous or stupid (for all that Anne Lister is the most singularly clever person Ann has ever met, she can be downright _stupid_), but this might take the cake.

Even if werewolves don’t exist, going into the forest in the dark as two girls by themselves is asinine.

“I think up this hill should do nicely,” Anne muses. Comes to a halt, turns to Ann, and cocks her head. “What do you think?”

“Sure.” She rubs cold, stiff fingers through her eyes, aching with exhaustion. “Up this hill.”

Anne climbs the hill on sure footing, her boots planting squarely into the ground, her muscular legs carrying her up easily. Ann is not even remotely athletic _or _good at balancing, so she more stumbles than climbs up the hill, hands getting dirty and smeared with sand and dewy grass as she catches herself.

Her heart lifts just a little when Anne laces their hands together and helps Ann be a little steadier.

And alright, the full moon is beautiful. It looks so close to them, this wraith-silver orb that features in so many of the legends and rumors that are spoken only in whispers in their small backwater town. Lunar cycles, shapeshifters, rabbits.

If they believed everything that was said, the world would be overcrowded with the mythical.

Anne slings an arm over Ann’s shoulders and pulls her into her side, plants a noisy kiss into her hair. “Worth it, right?” The flashing dangles from her wrist. Their breaths cloud in the air, and Ann’s chattering teeth adds the only other sound to their quiet breathing.

“It’s serene, I suppose,” Ann relents, angling her head up to be able to look at Anne. “Do you want to head back now?”

“Are you scared?”

“Pfft, no.” Ann huffs. “I would just rather be sleeping.”

“Because if you were,” Anne mumbles, hugging Ann to her, “you know I would protect you from anything.”

“Don’t think you could handle a werewolf, Lister.”

Their foreheads rest together, cold. Their breaths, warm. Anne smirks. “For you, I could handle anything.”


	11. under water.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 11: under water. 
> 
> we see a return of pirate captain anne lister and her young charge ann walker as they go searching for the booty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coming back to the most well-liked au so far because they've been easy to write and it fits.
> 
> i'm thinking already about tomorrow though - i'm going to be very busy and i don't know if i'll have time to upload a fic. i'll have it written in pen on paper just to soothe my challenge completionist ass (i really don't want to skip a day), but yeah, might not make it to ao3 until sunday.
> 
> have a good weekend, y'all! <3

Ann Walker could not be more different than the way they had found her weeks ago. Her skin has bronzed away from the sickly pale, and she has put on more flesh and some muscle as well. Life aboard the ship as a deck hand has done her well.

Her hair has been tamed, put into braids to keep it out of her face—though wisps still curl at her hairline and at the nape of her neck, and at night... Oh, but Anne shouldn’t think of the luxurious sprawl of golden curls on the red silken pillow of her bed in a moment like this.

They have forsaken freebooting for a bit to partake in a part of a pirate’s life that is becoming far rarer than it should: treasure hunting. Anne has been obsessed with one tall tale in particular, of a veritable treasure stowed away somewhere in the Pacific.

She has hunted far and wide for any documentation on it, every story told of it by people deep in the cups she provides them. The likely hiding spot has been narrowed down to a few remaining options, and she is checking them off her list one after the other whenever they naturally pass on their travels.

One such spot has come up now as they veer through the beautiful blues close to the Southern Americas, where even taller tales get told of the people and their magicks that live there.

Anne will stick to the high seas and the many dangers lurking above and beyond, thank you very much. Landwalkers and their brand of adventure do not entice her whatsoever.

She saunters up to the front of the ship as it noses through the waves. The island is so close now, no longer a speck of land but the true promise of it, and her hands are itching to hop off her ship and get to searching.

Ann is leaning against the railing, peering up ahead as well. Her cotton shirt still hangs loose on her, the wind toying with the flaps at the front that haven’t been tied properly in their hurry to get out of the cabin. Anne pulls the girl to her by the hip, delights momentarily in how readily Ann responds to her, but she sets to shoring Ann up further rather than taking the clothes off of her.

“If I find the treasure now, you really must be my good luck charm,” she drawls as she does drag her knuckles across the bare skin at the base of her throat, unable to help herself. She has not been this smitten with anyone since she was last on land for longer than a few days, but Ann was the rarest find of all in the middle of the ocean.

Already Anne thinks of her as good luck.

“I’ll do my best.”

Sometimes, when Ann isn’t concentrating on living in the moment, her gaze will detach from reality and wander someplace darker; Anne takes her by the hand and snaps her out of it, waves her other hand over to the fast-approaching stretch of sand and rock.

No greenery, but no houses either. It looks quite big for a single, isolated island, but there are many like it in the seas.

What really piques her interest is that there are so many hiding spots. Scraggly outcroppings, slight hills, and the ruins of a stone building that have long collapsed.

When the Mariana bumps into the sand and lodges itself there, when the anchor drops to the sturdy ground below, first unease and then excitement jolts into her gut. Anne Lister does not like to be on land. Everything feels wrong. Sensation is configured the wrong way. Every step is heavy and clunky.

Their boots leave deep imprints in the wet sand.

“You all know what to do. Ann and I will circle the coast, you guys head inland.”

They walk in silence for a short while, both of them looking around every which way, eagle-eyed for the slightest details. As soon as they are well and truly alone, Anne pulls Ann close to her again. “They say it’s a chest made of the blackest of woods and protected by all sorts of spellwork on the lock, all to protect the greatest treasure within.”

Ann looks up at her, eyes wide. “What treasure could be the greatest?”

“I would like to find that out as well, little bird.”

But the day does not prove so glamorous. It takes the better part of three hours for them to walk the entire way around at their slow crawl of a pace. They are winded, their cheeks red from the sand that the wind has whipped up into their faces, and there has been no sign of any treasure. Most of her crew has returned already and is sitting on the deck, singing songs and drinking rum.

Anne is not ready to face the music yet. Her crew trusts her, but... a hunt like this eats at her image for as long as it bears no fruit. Should they find it, all of that will be wiped away in favor of even more adoration. But they’re not there yet.

She sits down on a rock with somewhat of a flattened surface and is joined moments later by Ann, sheltering against the wind by cuddling into her. No woman has ever been quite so adamant to keep as little space between them as possible at all times, so that lessens the sting of once more not finding what she so desperately wants to find.

“Those stories you told me,” Ann whispers, nuzzling into Anne’s neck. “_Surrounded by blue, the treasure awaits_. Could that not also mean _under _the sea?”

“Under—_under_. My gods, Ann Walker, you might very well be right. That should open up many more possibilities...” She pulls Ann into her lap and kisses her soundly, hand clasped around her cheek and the other already untangling her braid. “If you have cracked it, why, I will find you the biggest pearls in the Pacific and put them around your neck yourself.”

Ann grins, though a pretty blush touches to a face that was once soft and scared but looks more like that of a pirate already, hard-set and tan. In any way, Ann is beautiful, but she is most beautiful still when she smiles.

“Why, I think I would much rather have you for my treasure, Captain.”

“A deal has been struck, miss Walker. I shall be yours, then, on the occasion that we find the treasure. Should it be _under_ the sea.”

“What if it’s above?”

Anne looks at her a long moment, at this girl that fate orchestrated her to meet. “Then you shall be mine instead.”

Neither of them felt inclined to break away from kissing to argue that those two were the same proposition.


	12. what have you done?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt 12: what have you done? 
> 
> anne wakes up in the hospital after her last parallel universe hopping went wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> going to try and catch up to make up for lost days and be able to finish out 31 prompts on halloween.

She has the worst case of cotton mouth and her head pounds something nasty. The bed beneath her lacks the firm grip that her own mattress has, formed to her body and exactly to her liking from years of sleeping on it contentedly—or not sleeping, also contentedly.

But it’s the gentle tone of Mariana somewhere to the right of her that fully clues her in that something is _wrong_. And not just somewhat wrong—_nuclear kind of wrong_.

She opens her eyes, then squeezes them shut against the harsh lamps that shine down on her with the wattage of the sun.

“Anne?”

Blinking, she slowly twists sideways until the sight of Mariana Belcombe fills her vision. Her edges are not fully designed, fuzzy and blurring into the backdrop, but it’s her. Beautiful as always, but much softer than normal.

They are never gentle with one another. They bicker, they fight, they’re rough and demanding of each other. Even their pillow talk is an erratic bouncing off each other. Not now. Now, Mariana is gazing at her tenderly, frowning in concern or maybe tempered anger.

“What have you _done_?”

The filmy quality of Mariana is disconcerting. She looks like she could evaporate at any moment.

Anne’s voice is rough like gravel when she replies, “What?” Because—_ what? _She has no idea how she got here. When she tries to think back, her mind blanks. All she can remember is empty space and, for some reason, a fractured mirror.

“The doctor said you must have been feeling the symptoms for weeks. _Weeks_. You never said anything, you—” Mariana’s sweet bow of a bottom lip starts to quiver. “You could’ve been _dead_. What have you been doing that’s so much more important than going to a doctor?”

“I—” What _has_ she been doing? She closes her eyes, carefully reaches into her mind, reaches _back_ , reaches _beyond_ that dark void and that shattered glass, but—nothing. “Don’t know.” That’s not an answer Anne very often or very readily offers, but the truth is that she is starting to get alarmed because _she doesn't know_.

Blackouts don’t ever happen. She remembers _ everything _ . That she now has this gap in her memory is _terrifying_.

Just then a nurse walks into the room, momentarily breaking her haze of worry. She has a genuine sort of smile, showing as well in her blue eyes. A sticker on her pink shirt proclaims her a volunteer. “Will you look at that?”

The woman hands Mariana a cup of coffee, then turns towards her. She is brilliantly solid, fully opaque.

In the back of her mind, there's an itching that she _knows_ this woman—knows her better than she even knows herself. It's an odd sensation.

“You have a wonderful girlfriend, miss Lister. Did you know not an hour passed that she wasn't here, by your side?” She pats her hand against the foot end of Anne's bed. “I'm glad you woke up. Mariana, I will see you tomorrow.”

Only when the woman is gone, leaving only her vanilla and cinnamon perfume scent behind, does Anne turn towards Mariana. “Who was that?”

“Ann Walker. Pretty sure she's an angel, that one.”

_Who are you, Ann Walker?_ she thinks. _Why do I feel like you are the most important person I'll ever meet?_


End file.
